

1. Ox the Evidences of the Antiquity of Man in the 
United States. By Colonel Charles Whittlesey, of Cleve- 
land, Ohio. 

Within the past fire years remarkable developments have 
taken place in Europe connected with the antiquity of man ; 
not less then a dozen books have been published upon the re- 
cent discoveries, most of which are written by men of learning, 
and show the results of their personal observations. The 
number of the relics of man thus brought to our notice is sur- 
prising. In the delta where the impetuous Tiniere discharges 
into the Lake of Geneva at Villeneuve, in Switzerland, Mr. 
Morlot has traced the successive occupants of that country 
from the Christian era back to the age of Stone. 

The savans of Switzerland have discovered and explored 
large numbers of the habitations of a departed race, who built 
their domicils upon piles, in the shallow water of the lake near 
the shore, and who were also of the era of bronze, and stone 
implements. Retiring still farther from the historical epoch, 
the French and Belgian geologists and ethnologists have found 
m the numerous bone caverns of those countries, utensils fabri- 
cated by men, and bones of the human race, under circumstances 
which have led these investigators to date their existence nearly 
or quite to the glacial period. These announcements by the 
continental explorers were received by the English geologists 
with astonishment, and in most cases with incredulity 

In 1863 the patience of the English investigators was nearly 
exhausted, by reports made by M. Boucher de Perthes, at 
Abbeville, on the banks of the Somme, that he had exhumed a 
human jaw from the superficial materials of that region He 
had in 1837 and 1844 announced the discovery in & the same 
beds at a depth of ten to twelve feet, of numerous wrought 



2 



B. NATURAL HISTORY. 



implements in flint, made from the silicious nodules of the chalk 
formation on which the Abbeville drift materials rest. Durin°- 
a quarter of a century these reports were generally discredited. 
M. Boucher de Perthes was not a man of science, but a gen- 
tleman of wealth and leisure, of high literary acquirements, 
with much French enthusiasm, and he had a theory to support. 
His brilliant general learning rather injured than improved his 
authority among those who pursue the exact sciences. He 
adhered to the doctrine that the flood of Xoah extended over 
the earth, and that the knives and arrowheads in the drift of 
the Somme were the remains of generations which were de- 
stroyed by it. To find evidence in support of this belief, he 
pursued his investigations of the gravel beds around Abbeville, 
until one generation has passed away. His proofs were thus 
far only sufficient to convince a few personal friends of his own 
nation. His own life had passed the usual limit of human 
existence, yet the ardor of youth was in his case coupled with 
the perseverance of age. 

A number of other fortunate circumstances combined to 
render his researches more thorough than any heretofore carried 
on in the drift materials. There is a canal in the valley of the 
Somme, which in one place gave a fresh section sixty feet in 
height. The railway from Bologna to Paris passes through 
Abbeville, and up the Somme. 

For many years the common roads of Picardy have been 
made and repaired with the flint gravel of the drift beds, which 
was procured from numberless pits along the banks of the 
Somme. 

The French government has built a large permanent fort 
near the residence of M. Boucher de Perthes, at Abbeville, in 
the ditches of which the same beds are exposed. M. de Perthes 
had for many years engaged the workmen upon all these im- 
provements to search in the gravel for flint arrowheads, 
hatchets and splinters, by paying them a small sum for what 
they should find. He had also the good will of the Emperor, 
and consequently of the superintendents of the works. He 
spent much of his own time with the laborers in the pits, and 
had friends who did the same. His faith in the existence of 
human bones in the same beds where the flint implements were 



B. NATURAL HISTORY. 



3 



found, never flagged, because he considered that he had himself 
seen decayed fragments of them ; not, however, perfect enough 
to announce to the world. 

On the 28th of March, 1863, the great object of a long life 
was accomplished by the discovery in a pit at the wind-mill 
of Quignon, about seventy-five feet above the tidewater at 
Abbeville, of one-half of the lower human jaw, near which were 
some human teeth. During the year which followed, several 
other fragments of human bones were found in a similar situa- 
tion, in a layer of gravel near the overlying chalk, at depths of 
ten to twelve feet. These were in close connection with the 
flint implements, but the human remains were so small, and 
with the exception of the teeth so much decked, that the 
workmen very seldom noticed them. They had, moreover, a 
superstitious dread of human bones found in a position so 
mysterious, and therefore rather avoided, than sought them. 
Most of these remains were discovered by scientific collectors, 
who broke open with their hands the lumps of clay and sand of 
which they formed the nucleus, which the workmen had thrown 
into the spoil banks. It is evident that nothing short of the 
presentiment, the faith, and the enthusiasm of M. B. de Perthes, 
making the most of the most favorable circumstances, would 
have brought these relics to light. "Without all these happ}- 
coincidences the discoveiy might not have been made during 
another century. His disclosures led to close investigations 
along the valley of the Somme, and the bluffs which border 
upon it, up the stream to and beyond Amiens, a distance of 
about thirty miles, the formations being everywhere the same. 
Hundreds of flint implements have been exhumed from the 
same gravel beds, on the French side of the channel, and on 
the English side, in formations precisely the same ; amounting 
in all to about (3 000) three thousand. 

As to the denial made by the principal English archaeologists 
regarding the genuineness of the jaw described by M. de Perthes, 
I refer to the report of Milne-Edwards and others in the " Compte 
Rendus," from May, 1863, to July, 1864. 

If we cannot rely upon statements supported by such an 
accumulation of proof as is there produced, we must refuse 
credence to most of the reported facts in relation to all other 
fossil remains. 



4 



B. NATURAL HISTORY. 



AGE OF THE ABBEVILLE GRAVEL BEDS. 

It may not be true that the superficial materials in which 
these remains are found, are of the same age as the North 
American drift. They are, however, the only stratified beds 
between the soil and the cretaceous strata in that region, and 
they occupy a very extensive region in France and England. 
These beds contain the fossil horse, ox. Elephas primigenius. 
and rhinoceros, and constitute what is known in Western 
Europe^toy the name of diluvium. It is quite probable that 
those wide spread diluvial layers belong to a modified condi- 
tion of the drift materials, corresponding to what we observe 
here in large valleys near the southerly border of the boulder 
drift. As the glacial period drew towards a close, the interven- 
tion of ice as a transporting agent became less, and that of 
water greater. The European diluvium probably belongs to 
the later phase of this era. 

Some explorers detect the action of large floes of ice, in the 
movement of blocks belonging to strata foreign to the region ; 
but most of the materials are of local origin, belonging to the 
valleys of the present streams. In general, the mammalian 
remains are the same as in the drift of the United States. 
Along the great valleys of Western Europe, such as the Seine, 
the Ehone, and the Rhine, the loess is a conspicuous member, 
generally the upper one. It is the same in the valley of the 
Missouri, the Mississippi and the Ohio. The European dilu- 
vium is a fresh-water deposit, like that of the western and north- 
western drift deposits, on the waters of the lakes and the 
Mississippi. It embraces, like our drift beds, many varieties of 
timber and vegetables which are more northern than the 
present vegetation. The fresh-water and land shells which are 
embraced in the superficial materials here and in Western 
Europe, are almost identical. So many resemblances o- 0 far 
to establish a geological parallelism. 

Mr. Lvell inclines to the opinion that the flint bearing beds of 
Amiens and Abbeville are more ancient than the bone layers 
at Natchez, Mississippi, which are at the bottom of the loesV 

Whatever may be the exact order of arrangement, there is a 
general synchronism between the post-tertiary or quaternary 



B. NATURAL HISTORY. 



5 



system of Europe and the United States, and since human 
relies have certainly been found in this formation in the old 
world, it is reasonable to expect them here. If human bones 
exist in our northern drift or in the modified river valley depos- 
its of the terrace period, generations may pass before they are 
discovered. Flint and stone implements are imperishable, but 
the osseous parts of animals and men are dissolved by chemical 
action. In beds of such great antiquity, historically considered, 
as the lower quaternary, very little is preserved except the teeth. 
Such discoveries must, therefore, be due in this country, princi- 
pally to accident, and not to research. 

We cannot expect to have the concurrent aid of an enthu- 
siast like M. Boucher de Perthes, a government ready to assist, 
and thousands of workmen turning over the earth, in which 
such revelations niay be expected. 

ANTIQUITY OF THE NORTH AMERICAN RED MAN. 

It is a little more than three hundred years since the Span- 
iards landed on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, where they 
found the red man, in eveiy respect the same as he is now, 
among the southern tribes of the United States. If we can 
credit the historical literature of Iceland, the Northmen were 
on the coast of New England about the year 1000, where they 
met a savage people, apparently the same as our forefathers 
encountered there six hundred years later. The same tribes of 
Indians, remnants of whom have survived to our day, were 
seen during the previous one hundred 3'ears on the St. Law- 
rence and the Atlantic coasts, by Jacques Cartier, Americus 
Vespucius, Verrezani and the Cabots. 

By historical proofs that are now regarded as worthy of 
credit, we can thus trace the North American Indian, as a 
resident in the territory of the United States, backward more 
than eight centuries and a half. In this as in all countries 
there are found the remains of a people more ancient than any 
written record. 

The North American Indian has alwaj's occupied a position 
so low, in comparison with other races, that permanent monu- 
ments of his presence are very rare. If he had disappeared 
before the advent of an historical race, no certain traces of his 



6 



B. NATURAL HISTORY. 



existence would have been found. His tenements were tem- 
porary shelters, which he carried from place to place. The 
mounds he raised over the dead were low, and contained relics 
of which the most that can be said is they belonged to a people 
in the rudest state of barbarism. Where he cultivated the soil, 
it was in a manner so slight that a few centimes of time 
obliterated the evidences of it. The scattered inscriptions and 
effigies which he cut upon trees and stones had no meaning to 
any one but himself. His tools and implements had no special 
characteristics to distinguish them from those of any other 
savage people in the lowest scale of development. Since the 
historical period in North America he has remained precisely 
the same, without progress towards civilization, and therefore it 
may be inferred that his condition in previous centuries while 
an inhabitant of this country was a fixed one. He could not 
have descended much lower, and he has left no evidences of an 
advance. The effect of this fixedness of condition is to render 
the deductions of craniologists of more value than they would 
be in the case of a people whose mode of living, whose 
thoughts, occupations, dress, religion, intelligence, food, and 
general surroundings were subject to change, especially in the 
direction of progress. 

How long have they been in the occupation of Xorth America, 
and how can we determine the period ? 

The antiquarians of Europe regard those ancient people who 
used flint implements, as having been prior to those who had 
implements of stone, and the latter as being older than the 
races who had the use of bronze, or other metals, especially 
iron. In the United States the race next prior to the white 
one, had very few implements of stone. Their knives and 
arrowheads, their war implements, and then agricultural tools, 
were almost entirely of flint. 

They had a very few and very rude cutting instruments of 
native copper ; possessing at the same time in a certain degree, 
implements of the flint, the stone and the metal era of Europe, 
the flint greatly predominating. The mound builders, who pre- 
ceded the race of red men, produced and used tools in the 
reverse order. Their stone axes, adzes and mauls, were very 
numerous, copper tools plenty, and those of flint very rare. 



B. NATURAL HISTORY. 



7 



In their case the most ancient people were the most industrious, 
and cultivated the soil, possessed more mechanical ingenuity, 
and left more prominent monuments, which in the course of 
nature Trill never perish. 

The difference between the relics of the mound builders and 
the Indians is so great that there is little difficulty in de- 
ciding between them. 

On the Atlantic coast, from Nova Scotia to Florida, there are 
numerous refuse heaps of sea-shells, which are almost identical 
with the ancient shellheaps of Sweden, Norway and Denmark, 
known in those countries as u Kjcekkenmceddings." 

Those of the Eastern and Southern States, have been exam- 
ined by Mr. Jones, of Halifax, Professor "VYyman and others, 
who regard them as the work of the North American Indians. 
On one of the shell mounds of Florida, situated on the river 
St. Johns, there grew an oak, which was five hundred and 
fifty years old. There are very ancient shell mounds on 
the Tennessee River, between Chattenooga and the " Muscle 
Shoals," but the}' have not been thoroughly explored. I have 
also seen them on the Wabash in Indiana, near New Har- 
mon}-. The American shellheaps, like those of Scandinavia, 
contain stone and flint implements mingled with charcoal, 
and the bones of animals, fishes, birds and reptiles, now or 
recently living in the vicinity. Only one small bone of man 
has been found in the American kitchen-muddins.* They have 
neither the size or the marks of antiquity, which the Danish 
shellheaps exhibit but are some of them so ancient that 
changes of climate and of vegetation have occurred while they 
were being formed. The shellheaps, therefore, as at present 
known, give us very little information in regard to the an- 
tiquity of the red man. 

But there are remains of the same race in bone caves, and 
rock shelters, which bear directly upon this question, to which 
I will call your attention. 

* Since this paper was read, a human underjaw, with teeth, has been found by 
Prof. S. F. Baird, at the Shellheap oa Eagle Hill, Ipswich, Mass. For an account 
of this and other Shellheaps in New England, see Prof. Wyman's articles in the 
" American Naturalist," Vol. I. Later investigations than those reported by Prof. 
Wyman have shown the deposit at Eagle Hill to be much larger and deeper than 
was at first supposed.— Editor. 



8 



B. NATURAL HISTORY. 



ELYRIA SHELTER CAVE. 

Examined in April, 1851, by Dr. E. W. Hubbard, Professor J. Brainerd, 
and Charles Whittlesey. 

This is one of numerous instances where the "grindstone 
grit" of northern Ohio, resting upon soft shale, presents a pro- 
jecting edge, forming a grotto capable of sheltering a large num- 
ber of persons, being about fifty feet in length, by fifteen feet 
broad. This and others in the vicinity which hare not been 
explored, correspond to the European "shelter cavern," where 
human remains are always found. These retreats constituted 
the domicils of our race, while in their rudest condition. TTe 
dug to a depth of four feet on the floor of this cave, composed 
of charcoal, ashes, and bones of the wolf, bear, deer, rabbit, 
squirrels, fishes, snakes and birds ; all of which existed in this 
region when it became known to the whites. The place was 
thoroughly protected against rains. At the bottom, lying ex- 
tended upon clean yellow sand, their heads to the rear and feet 
outwards, were parts of three human skeletons ; two of them 
nearly entire. Two of the skulls were preserved by Prof. 
Brainerd. They were decided to belong to the North American 
race of red men, by those who had an opportunity to examine 
them. These skulls were exhibited at the Cincinnati Meeting 
of the American Association in 1851, but were afterwards de- 
stroyed by a mob, together with the entire Museum of the Ho- 
moeopathic College, at Cleveland. The position of the skeletons 
indicated that they were crushed by a large slab of the over- 
hanging sandstone falling upon the party, while they were asleep 
at the back part of the grotto. One of the skulls was that of 
an old woman, the other of a young man. Flint arrowheads 
such as the Indians once used, were scattered throughout this 
mass of animal remains. 

This cave may be found on the west bank of Black Eiver, a 
short distance below the forks, at the town of Elyria, Ohio, 
in a romantic gorge, through which the river flows. Judg- 
ing from the appearance of the bones, and the depth of the 
accumulations over them, two thousand years may have 
elapsed since the human skeletons were laid on the floor of this 
cave. 



B. NATURAL HISTORY. 



HOIAX REMAINS IN A C ATE NEAR LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY. 

T. E. Scowden, C. E., 1853. 

In constructing the reservoir for the Louisville water-works, 
on the bluffs of the Ohio, two miles above the city, the Engi- 
neer, T. R. Scowden, Esq., discovered a cave in which were a 
large number of human bones. It is forty feet from a mural 
face of lime-rock of the Upper Silurian epoch, which is known 
in Kentucky as the ''cavernous limestone." The elevation of 
the bluff is about one hundred and twenty-six feet above low 
water in the river, and ninety feet above the bottom lands, 
which are half a mile wide in front of the water-works. It is 
probable the cave is an extensive one. No outlet is known, 
and when water was directed into it, no place of discharge was 
discovered. As far as it was explored the opening was not 
large. It had a direction downward and to the rear, but was so 
much infested with rattlesnakes that no one could be induced to 
examine it. On the rock there was ten feet of the loess like loam 
of the country, in which was a depression, into which the sur- 
face water settled, such as in that region are called sinks. The 
bones, a box of which were preserved by Mr. Scowden, were 
cemented into a breccia, by calcareous drippings from above. 
In one mass there are portions of six human crania, but none 
of them large enough to be of value in the comparison of races. 
There are other bones and teeth, representing more than that 
number of persons, which are in a good state of preservation. 
The opening in the rocks at the top of the cave, which was 
closed by a loamy cla}% was not as large as the cavern, the roof 
of which was twelve feet below the surface of the lime-rock. 
From the roof there were the usual pendant concretions, known 
as stalactites. In shape this part of the cave was a dome, six 
feet across at the base, and about five feet high, the bones 
Lying in a confused heap on the floor. The downward passage 
into which the water flowed was situated at the rear, and its 
direction was aw r ay from the bluff. A stone axe and a pestle 
were found with the bones ; also a flint arrowhead. Below the 
cliff there was an ancient Indian burying ground, in which many 
graves and human bones were exposed while digging the trench 
for the main inlet pipe of the water-works. 
2 



10 



B. NATURAL HISTORY. 



The bodies may have been introduced for burial, through a 
distant entrance not yet discovered, or there may have been 
a time when the cave was open above. They were evidently of 
the Indian race, and the place was a sepulchre. Among the 
Hurons who lived between Lake Ontario and Lake Huron, 
when the French missionaries were there, two centuries since, 
there was a practice of collecting, from time to time, the bones 
of their dead from all the graves of the tribe. They were then 
placed in a pit, without order, and covered in the presence of 
all the people, consecrated with funeral ceremonies and lamenta- 
tions. The cavity or sink in the earth, at Louisville, would 
constitute a burial pit already made, or partially made ; and 
after the bones were deposited, they could have been easily 
covered. From the quantity of tufa formed on the roof and 
over the bones on the floor, it is evident that a long period has 
elapsed since they were deposited— full as long as in the case 
of the Elyria grotto, or say two thousand years. 

HIGH ROCK SPRING, SARATOGA, NEW YORK. 
Profile by Dr. Henry McGuire, 1866. 

1. Muck and tufa on which the cone rested . . 7 feet. 

2. Tufa . u 2 " 

3. Vegetable muck, on the surface of which lay a pine 

tree, with one hundred and thirty annual layers 
of growth, worn by the feet of persons, probably 

Indians, not gi ven . 

4. Calcareous tufa, same as No. 2 3 f ee t. 

Chancellor Walworth states, that in 1825 he saw at St. Re^is, 
New York, an old Mohawk, by the name of Loren Tarbel, who 
said the water did not flow over the cone when he was a boy. 

The estimates made by Dr. McGuire, of the time occupied in 
the formation of the tufa, which showed twenty-five layers to 
the inch, is, for five feet, fifteen hundred years. 

Rate of formation of the rock cone, eighty years to the inch, 
is, for four feet, equal three thousand eight hundred and forty 
years (probably too large). For the accumulation of muck, 
five hundred and ten years (which is probably too small). To- 
tal, five thousand eight hundred and forty years. The pine tree 



B. NATURAL HISTOET. 



11 



worn smooth by the feet of men, beneath the upper bed of tufa, 
must have been there at least one thousand years before the 
formation of the rock cone.* 

Mr. Koch, who furnished a skeleton of the Mastodon Ohio- 
ensis, from the recent alluvium of the Pomme de terre River, Mo., 
to the British Museum at London, convinced the English geolo- 
gists, that he found a flint arrowhead at the depth of fifteen 
feet beneath the skeleton, which arrowhead was of the pattern 
used by the Xorth American Indians. He also stated that 
near the skeleton, and full as deep, were three other flint 
arrowheads. If these statements are reliable, they tend to 
extend the antiquity of the occupation of red men much bej^ond 
that of the American shellheaps, in which are no remains of 
extinct amimals. This statement of Mr. Koch, is, however, 
contradicted by one of the men who assisted him in exhuming 
the skeleton. A similar case is presented by Dr. Holmes of 
Charleston, S. C, in the "Proceedings of the Philadelphia Acad- 
emy of Natural Sciences," for Jul}', 1859. He found pottery at 
the base of a peat bog, on the banks of the Ashley River, in 
close connection with the grinder of a mastodon. 

This pottery probably belonged to the red man, and if so, 
strengthens the proof of his presence here before the horse, 
mammoth and mastodon were extinguished. 

A PEOPLE BETWEEN THE INDIANS AND THE MOUND BUILDERS. 

The ancient earthworks which abound on the waters of the 
Ohio do not extend northward to Lake Erie. There is a belt 
of country north of Central Ohio, near the water shed of the 
streams that empty into the Lake, which is without ancient 
works, so far as at present known. On all the rivers discharg- 
ing into Lakes Erie and Ontario from the South, there are 
ancient forts in profusion, but they are of a type entirely differ- 
ent from those in the valley of the Ohio, which extend south- 
ward through Kentucky, Tennessee and Texas, into Mexico. 

*Dr. McGuire has republished an account of this excavation at High Rock 
Spring, in the " Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History," Vol. xii, 
p. 398 (May, 1S69), more in detail than the above, but giving nearly the same total 
result (5470 years, within all bounds). He also mentions the finding of a fire-place 
and charcoal on the clay bed, under a stratum of muck 2 feet thick, underlying the 
last 3 feet of tufa mentioned above. — Editor. 



12 



B. NATURAL HISTORY. 



There are few mounds and no pyramids or rectangles on the 
shores of these lakes, but hundreds of small irregular fortifica- 
tions of earth. They are always located in places which have 
natural strength, such as bluffs and points of land with water 
near by, and steep ravines on two or more sides. Generally the 
fort consists of a ditch or ditches, and embankments across the 
narrow part of a peninsula. They are almost without excep- 
tion well selected strongholds, judiciously fortified, and have the 
appearance of long occupation. The people who occupied these 
forts doubtless comprised not merely soldiers, but the entire 
population of the country. They must have been cultivators 
of the soil, but divided into hostile clans, like the old Scots 
and Germans, who required castles as a defence against each 
other. This race of fort builders on the lakes may have been 
contemporaries of the mound builders, and of the effigy builders 
of Wisconsin ; but they were of prior date to the Indian, 
who has no more knowledge of the origin of these forts than 
of the mounds, and who had no earthworks when the whites 
first encountered them. Mr. Squier in his "Antiquities of 
Western New York," attributes them to the Indians, but 
upon grounds that do not seem to me sufficient. 

I introduce this intermediate, or if not intermediate, distinct 
race, as the basis of future investigation ; but do not feel 
warranted at present, in using it to increase the antiquity of 
the American man. I confine myself to the red men, the 
mound builders, and to the evidence of fossil men, contempo- 
rary with the elephant, mastodon, horse megalonyx, and other 
mammalia of the quaternary. 

THE RACE OF THE MOUXDS. 

The difference in their modes of burial, indicates clearly that 
the mound builders were a people distinct from the North 
American Indians. In almost every ancient burial mound, the 
remains of both races have been interred ; the bodies of the 
most ancient at the bottom, or at great depths, on charcoal 
hearths, in rude enclosures of wood or stone, with copper orna- 
ments, implements, wrought shells, coarse cloths, and other 
peculiar marks. On the sides of the same mounds, some of 
which are sevent}^ feet in height, are the skeletons of the 



B. NATURAL HISTOET. 



13 



red race, at shallow depths, with no attempt at stone or 
wooden coffins, and in the early graves no metal ornaments. 
In the sepulchres of the mound builders, flint knives are rare, 
and flint arrowheads still more so ; but stone axes are not 
uncommon. In the Indian graves are numerous flint arrow- 
heads and knives, but stone implements, except pipes, are 
very rare. The Indian has nowhere raised conspicuous earth 
mounds over his dead. Their most notable monuments, are low 
stone-heaps, like the Irish cairns, formed gradually by the 
friends and admirers of the deceased, as they pass the spot, 
throwing a small boulder upon it. In the Indian graves are no 
evidences that the body was burned, as there are in large num- 
bers of the old earthen tumuli. No instance is reported where 
an earth mound has beneath it the remains of a race which 
might be more ancient, but the instances are numerous where 
there are bones of the mound builders beneath those of the red 
man . 

The mound builders show in all their relics and their work, 
a greater mechanical skill, more intelligence, industry, and per- 
severance, than the Indian tribes ever possessed. They wrought 
the copper mines of Lake Superior very extensively for the 
purpose of fabricating tools of this metal, which are found in 
their mounds, in contact with then skeletons. The Indians 
had only the rudest copper implements, and these were of a 
pattern quite different from those discovered in the mounds. 
It was a very rare circumstance that the French missionaries 
found among them copper that had been wrought. It was gen- 
erally treasured up as a manitou, in the original form of a 
nugget, and transmitted as an heirloom from generation to 
generation. The copper adzes, axes, chisels, spades and spear- 
heads, of the mound builders, were nowhere found in use among 
the living tribes, nor any tools having the same degree of finish, 
or intended for purposes of so high civilization. They had 
only the rudest knives, arrowpoints, and implements for curing 
skins. 

These facts sufficiently attest the presence of different races, 
and at a different period ; the builders of temples and burial 
mounds being the predecessors of those who constructed no 
monuments or fortifications of earth. We must also infer that 



14 



B. NATURAL HISTORY. 



a people sufficiently numerous to work the mines of Lake Supe- 
rior throughout the copper region, and to construct works such 
as those at Newark, Marietta, Circleville, Portsmouth and 
Cincinnati, must have been permanent occupants ; but how 
shall we determine the length of this period of occupation. 

After examining the principal works of the mound period, in 
Ohio, and their mine works on Lake Superior, I could not esti- 
mate the period of their occupation at less than one thousand 
years, with a strong probability in favor of two thousand. If 
we drop for the present the supposition of an intermediate race, 
and take the highest estimates for the occupation of the red 
man and the mound builders, we have only four thousand 
years, which does not cany us back to the beginning of the 
historical period, in Asia and Africa. 

In Switzerland, relics of man in the recent alluvium attest 
his presence there, according to M. Morlot, nine thousand to 
eleven thousand years, or beyond the historical records of the 
old world several thousand years. It is- highly probable, and 
is in accordance with the analogies of Europe, that since the 
glacial period, there was a people here, more ancient than the 
mound builders, but I know of no remains of such a people, 
except the charcoal beds at Portsmouth, Ohio, in the ancient 
valley alluvium. The whelk, found by Mr. Cleveland, is a shell 
which was in common use by the mound builders. The allu- 
vium in which it was embedded, is of the most recent kind, 
which at the mouths of the tributaries of the Ohio, forms very 
rapidly. At the mouth of the Great Miami, the mud deposited 
from back water in a single flood of the Ohio River is sometimes 
several inches in thickness. Since the settlement there in 
1789, the stumps of trees and large logs have been covered up 
in this way, until the plough now passes over them. This 
modern alluvium is easily distinguishable from the ancient 
river alluvium, which is derived from the drift materials, and 
which must also be distinguished from deposits of the terrace 
period, known in Ohio as the valley or modified drift. The 
terrace period represents the closing phase of the glacial era, 
when the valleys were full of water and floating ice, sorting the 
materials on a broad scale, in lines parallel with the streams. 
The ancient river alluvium is due wholly to the currents of 



B. NATURAL HISTORY. 



15 



streams acting upon the valley drift of the terrace period, at 
levels higher than the present channels. 

In both these deposits the elephant and mastodon are com- 
mon, as well as in the recent alluvium. In the ancient river 
alluvium has been found the gigantic beaver, or Castoroides 
Ohioensis of Nashport, Ohio, the taperoid jaw of Yellow Creek, 
Columbiana County, Ohio, and probably the Bos bombifrons of 
Trambull County, Ohio. 

There is, therefore, a long period of time to be accounted for 
between the earliest mound builders in this countiy, and the 
earliest inhabitants of the Swiss Lakes and of the Nile. 

Since the close of the terrace period there has been no mate- 
rial change in the surface of Ohio, and perhaps no general 
change in the climate. Man could have resided here then as 
well as now. In Belgium and France relics of man extend 
much farther back, into and even beyond the terrace period, 
when the surface of the country was somewhat different from 
what it is now. He lived, and may have perished, with the 
elephant, mastodon, rhinoceros, and the extinct elk, during 
the closing portions of the ice period. It is therefore reason- 
able to suspect that man existed in North America with the 
extinct elephant, mastodon, megaloiryx, horse, beaver, and 
the peccaiy of the United States, which lived towards the close 
of the ice era, though it does not follow that they, and he, were 
exactly cotemporary here with the European species. 

With the exercise of the same never tiring research dis- 
played by M. de Perthes, and the same facilities, it is highly 
probable that the drift clays of Lake Erie, and the valley of the 
St. Lawrence, would furnish us with equally palpable speci- 
mens of the ancient man. 

EVIDENCES OF MEN MORE ANCIENT THAN THE MOUND BUILDERS. 

In 1838 while examining the structure of the fluviatile de- 
posits on the Ohio River, at Portsmouth, Ohio, I saw in two 
places in the east part of that town, the remains of very ancient 
fires. 

At low water, and thence up to a height of twelve and fifteen 
feet, is a bed of sand and transported gravel, containing pebbles 
of quartz, granite, sandstone and limestone, derived partly from 



16 



B. NATURAL HISTORY. 



the adjacent carboniferous and Devonian rocks, and partly 
from the northern drift, the upper part much the coarsest. 

On this is a layer of blue quicksand, from one to five feet 
thick, in which is a timber bed, including large numbers of the 
trunks, branches, stumps and leaves of trees, such as are now 
growing on the Ohio, principally birch, black-ash, oak and 
hickory. 

Over the dirt bed is the usual loamy yellow brick-clay of the 
valley, fifteen to thirty feet in thickness, on which are very 
extensive works of the mound builders. In and near the bottom 
of this undisturbed homogeneous river loam, I saw two places 
where fires had been built on a circular collection of small 
stones, a part of which were then embedded in the bank. 

The stones were colored red by heat, and among them was 
charcoal, covered by the clay, of which I have specimens. 
Around and near to the fire beds, were what appeared to be the 
exterior membrane-like covering of river shells (unios), but no 
shells. It was several rods from one of the charcoal beds to 
the other, and they were not precisely on the same level. They 
were from eighteen to twenty feet above low water, and about 
fifteen feet beneath the surface. There are no trunks of trees 
in the loamy brick clay which is not laminated. It was re- 
ported that some of the trees in the blue stratum below had 
been charred. On the surface of the clay deposits near the fire 
beds were two parallels, portions of ancient earthworks ex- 
tending to the river. At the west end of the town — where an 
artificial mouth of the Scioto was formed, about thirty-five feet 
deep, in order to allow the Ohio canal to enter the river— the 
blue quicksand bed and the loam above it dips westerly down 
to the level of low water. To the westward of this artificial 
mouth the recent alluvium of the Scioto overlies the yellow 
loamy clay, cutting off both the quicksand and the loam. The 
Scioto alluvium has a darker color, is frequently contorted and 
laminated, and has embedded leaves and branches of trees now 
growing on its banks. 

Francis Cleveland, Esq., an engineer upon the State works, 
who, in 1828, had charge of the deep cut, informed me that at 
a depth of twenty-five feet in this alluvium several conch shells 
were taken out, which were five to eight inches in length. He 



B. NATURAL HISTORY. 



17 



said they were the same as one I then exhibited to him, pro- 
eared from an ancient mound on the Scioto River, and which 
Professor Kirtland determined to be a Pyrula perversa from 
the Gulf of Mexico and Chesapeake Bay, and called whelks. 
These shells were in common use by the mound builders, prob- 
ably in their public ceremonies. 

Here we have within the limits of the city of Portsmouth, 
memorials of the moimd period, and, as I conceive, of the rude 
fires of men of still higher antiquity. 

REPUTED EVIDENCES OE MAX IX THE QUATERXARY. 

Profile of the Mississippi Fiver Bluffs, at Xatchez, 3Iississippi, by Pro- 
fessor C. S. Forshey, 1842. 

1. At low water mark, slate, thickness un- 

known, probably cretaceous, . . 5 feet. 

2. Recent conglomerate, probably quaternary, S " = 13 feet. 

3. Coarse gray water-washed sand, quaternary, 

(high water mark at 40 feet), . . lis " =128 " 

4. Yellowish brown homogeneous calcareous 

loam, with fresh- water and land shells, 
the equivalent of the loess of the Rhine, 50 " =178 " 
On the surface of the sand, the skeleton of a mastodon was found, 
which appeared to have been buried erect. 

Sir Charles Lyell in 1847 (Antiquity of Man, p. 200), col- 
lected at this place twenty species of Helix, Heliciana, Pupa 
Cydostoma, Achatina and Succinea. And in the marly layers 
Lymnea, Plcmorbis, Paludina, Physa and Oyclas. 

A narrow gully called the 44 Mammoth Ravine," near Natchez, 
originated in the convulsions of the earthquake of 1811, is seven 
miles long and sixty feet deep. 

The Mastodon Ohioensis in the bed next below the loess was 
found in connection with the horse, Bos, Megalonyx, and other 
mammals. 

Among these bones Dr. Dickson found the pelvic bone of a 
man. It was colored black, like the other bones of this bed, 
but so are the recent bones of Indian graves in the neighbor- 
hood. The superficial materials of the Somnie in Picardy may 
be older than the Natchez bone bed, but there is not reliable 
evidence that Dr. Dickson's os innomanatum belongs to this 
3 



18 



B. NATUEAL HISTOET. 



bed. It is a case open to investigation without prejudice, like 
the early discoveries of Boucher de Perthes. 

Sir Charles Ly ell's profile at Vicksburg, Mississippi, eighty miles north of 
Natchez, 1846. 

1. Below low water, cretaceous. 

2. Sand-bed with rolled pebbles, same as at Xatchez. [This he re- 

gards as Eocene tertiary, but possibly drift. No tertiary has 
been reported by American geologists along the river above 
Vicksburg.] 

3. Calcareous loam or loess, same as at Xatchez. 

4. Soil. 

The loam, or loess of the Mississippi, has since 1846 been 
traced by Professors Safford, Owen, Swallow and Worthen. 
from Vicksburg to the mouth of the Missouri, and up the Ohio 
beyond the Wabash, where it contains the Megalonyx. 

WOEKS OF AET, GEINXELL LEADS, KANSAS. 

An instance is given by Professor Daniel Wilson (Prehis- 
toric Man, p. 46) of a flint knife, found at the Grinnell leads. 
Kansas, by Mr. P. A. Scott, at the depth of fourteen feet. It 
is probable that this knife belonged to some of our Indian 
races, with whom flint implements predominated, but how 
ancient the overlying deposits are, cannot be considered as well 
settled. 

There is, however, a case given, upon the authority of Pro- 
fessor Agassiz, where the jaws, teeth and bones of the human 
frame were found by Count Pourtales in a calcareous conglom- 
erate in Florida, which is geologically recent, but which they 
consider required ten thousand years to accumulate over the 
bones.* As no opinion is given as to the race to which these 
remains belong they cannot be connected with either the red 
man, or the mound builder. They may be parts of a skeleton, 
drifted from far distant lands, especially from the islands which 
constitute the West Indies. Unfortunately there is not only 
in this but in all the cases quoted in the United States, per- 

* Count Pourtales, in reference to several erroneous accounts that have been 
given regarding the Florida bones, makes the following statement in the "American 
Naturalist," Vol. ii, p. 443 (Oct., 186S). « The human jaw and other bones, found in 
Florida by myself in 1S48, were not in a coral formation, but in a fresh- water sand- 
stone on the shore of Lake Monroe, associated with fresh-water shells of species 
still living in the lake ( Paludina, Ampidaria, etc.)- No date can be assigned to the 
formation of that deposit, at least from present observation."— Editok. 



B. NATURAL HISTORY. 



19 



taining to the quaternary period, a degree of uncertainty in the 
evidence, which is fatal to a scientific result. 

The human skeleton described by Dr. Dowlais, found at the 
depth of (16) sixteen feet in the city of New Orleans, to which 
a high antiquity has been ascribed, belongs, according to the 
later investigations of Professor Hilgard, of the survey of Louis- 
iana, to the recent alluvium. 

While the canal around a rapid of the St. Lawrence was being 
excavated id ear Brockville in Canada, Dr. J. Raynolds of that 
place procured several copper tools, which are reputed to have 
been found (1-4) fourteen feet below the surface (Smithsonian 
Contributions, vol. x, p. 208). There were at the same depth a 
number of human skeletons, placed there evidently, according 
to some form of sepulture. The copper spearheads found 
among these skeletons correspond in their general characters 
to those of the mound builders, except in the mode of attach- 
ment to the shaft. In the Brockville spears there is a pointed 
spike or shank, instead of the usual hollow socket. There was 
also a spade-like tool of copper, of which none have been found 
in the mounds, but I have seen one from the drift gravel of 
Lake Superior closely resembling it. Neither have the copper 
spearheads, attributed to the mound builders, been found at 
such depths in their works as to render it certain they were 
made and used by them. The age of the Canada formation is 
not determined, but appears to be of the later drift, or terrace 
period, and the remains may have received a part of their cov-* 
ering from the alluvial wash of higher lands, or from slides. 
This locality requires farther examination. 

On the Ashley river, near Charleston, South Carolina, Dr. 
Holmes reports an instance where he discovered fragments of 
pottery at the bottom of a peat-bog, in close connection with 
remains of the Mastodon and Megatherium (Proceedings of 
the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, July, 1859). 
There is here a close resemblance to the pottery finds of the 
deposits of the Nile, and the relics of the peat bogs at Abbe- 
ville in France. There is in them evidence of high antiquity, 
not, however, carrying us beyond the alluvium. 

As the pendant or "plumb bob" of Sienite procured by Pro- 
fessor Grimes at the depth of (30) thirty feet below the present 
surface, in the bed of an ancient lake in California, will doubt- 



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20 B. NATURAL HISTORY. 

less receive a notice in these "Proceedings," from Colonel 
Foster, I make no farther reference to it than to call attention 
to the fact that the deposit must be regarded as more recent 
than the drift. Mr. John Collot, of Vermilion County, Illinois, 
has in his possession a similar ornament or implement three 
inches long, made with great care and symmetry from a piece 
of pure crystalline specular iron ore. He has also a fragment 
of another precisely like the above, and a beautifully formed 
hemisphere, like a paper weight, fabricated of the same mate- 
rial. They were found on the surface about fifteen miles south 
of Covington, Indiana. 

Near Perryville, in Knox County, Ohio, about twenty years 
since, I. N. Pillsbury, Esq., Civil Engineer, of Cleveland, Ohio, 
discovered a "plumb bob," very like the Sienitic one of Cali- 
fornia. It was taken by him about one foot beneath the sur- 
face, within one of the ancient forts common in Ohio. The 
material is a whitish gray crystalline limestone, not as elegant 
in form as those of Mr. Collot and Professor Grimes, but about 
the same length. 

In all of them, the hole at the upper end through which they 
were suspended, tapers towards the centre. It is more likely 
they were amulets or ornaments worn about the person, and 
are of an era subsequent to the mound builders. 

In this epitome of the evidences of man in the United States 
prior to the historical period, I have not alluded to the reputed 
skulls of Calaveras County, California, produced respectively 
by Professors Whitney and Blake. In regard to both of them 
there is a direct contradiction in reference to the authenticity 
of the relics, and the age of the deposits in which they are sup- 
posed to have been found. These " Proceedings" will no doubt 
contain their views and their proofs at full length. In every 
instance where we descend below the alluvium in search of 
human remains and relics we are thus far met by conflicting 
testimony as to the facts. 

The later clay, sand and gravel beds of the drift era on the 
lakes, and the newer drift and loess beds of the Mississippi, 
should contain them, if these deposits are, as they appear to be, 
coeval with those of the Somme. In the Belgian caves we are 
also furnished with works of man that seem to be as ancient 
as the closing out of the glacial period. 



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